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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781597">Blade Master</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacxmh/pseuds/kexinzz'>kexinzz (lilacxmh)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fanxyred, THE9 (Band), Youth With You, 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Avatar &amp; Benders Setting, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bending (Avatar), F/F, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:13:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781597</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacxmh/pseuds/kexinzz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Liu Yuxin is a runaway water-tribe Princess when she meets Bang Sing Se noble-women Lu Keran.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Liu Yuxin/Lu Keran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sun rising on Bang Si Se almost seemed to take the city by surprise. Despite the fact that this was normal commuter hours for the businesses of the middle ring, the men and women heading through the gates on their way to work the service jobs required in the middle ring to be startled and sleepy.</p><p> </p><p>Lying stretched out along the brown clay tiled roof of the ramshackle building she called home, Liu Yuxin basked like a cat in this early morning light. Though it might only be June, the sun was warm on her cheeks and bare arms. She laughed to herself quietly, remembering how obsessed she had been only months ago with keeping her skin pale and unblemished. <em>What a privilege …. </em>She thought. <em>To be so content with life that beauty was her biggest worry ... </em></p><p> </p><p>As much as she now recognised her old spoilt ways, she felt a pang deep in her heart for those times. As Princess of the Northern Water Tribe living in the palace at Agna Qel’a, she had been surrounded by her kin … days spent playing in the snow with the other noble children or practicing water-bending with her friends had encompassed her childhood entirely. Now, aged 20, she was completely alone. Squatting in a dingy apartment in the lower ring of Bang Sing Se, forced to turn to street performance to get by.</p><p> </p><p><em>Still, </em>she though gravely, <em>she’d rather spend a million lifetimes in this Earth Kingdom slum than return back to her homeland</em>.</p><p> </p><p>While she herself had been absorbed with snowball fights and training, it seemed like her father and the tribal government of the tribe had been imagined other things for her. It had started with the quiet comments once she’d turned of age … suggestions of sewing, cooking and painting as more suitable activists for a princess, gradually moving onto loud arguments in throne room at dinner time with Yuxin often finding herself left alone at the table, picking up the pieces of shattered china plate her father had left in the wake of his anger.</p><p> </p><p>All of these had been bearable however, until the marriage proposal arrived. The idea of marrying Hakoda, Chief of the Southern Tribe made her feel sick to her stomach. It’s not as if he was particularly unlikable. Yuxin had met him a few times at rare grand banquets and diplomatic summits and had found the man perfectly fine. However, that was just it. Fine.</p><p> </p><p>She’d realised she was different as soon as she’d entered her teenage hood. While the other girls in the tribe loved nothing more than to giggle about the local boys or watch them practice their bending, shirtless in the fjords outside the capital, Yuxin had remained utterly uninterested in matters of love and adoration.</p><p> </p><p>That was until that one night, camping under the stars with the army captain’s daughter, huddling together under the fur blankets they’d bought with them. The night had been cold and frosty but Yuxin’s whole body had felt filled with fire. Pressed up against the other girl, heart racing, almost bursting out of her chest with anticipation.</p><p> </p><p>Since that night, it’d been painfully clear to Yuxin that she was, in fact, interested in matters of love and adoration. Just it wasn’t tanned, muscled, male chests that she wanted to giggle over … rather the soft skin and subtle curves of women.</p><p> </p><p>It was because of this therefore, that the prospect of future marriage had made her stomach turn. The prospect of a life of heterosexual domesticity, living in the harbour city of the Southern Water Tribe, wasn’t one she could accept and so, with a heavy heart, she’d been all but forced to pack a small bag, climb into a canoe and sail away from her homeland.</p><p> </p><p>Months of weary travelled had followed, hitchhiking through the Earth Kingdom to its beating heart; the metropolis of Bang Sing Se. Quick talking and wise despite her youth, Yuxin had quickly found herself a room in an apartment shared by two other girls and a job in a street theatre performance team. Here, far away from either end of the earth, Yuxin’s water-bending skills were somewhat of a novelty to passerbys wandering through the market where the group tended to preform. This, combined with her remarkable skills at sword-fighting despite her sex, made her a highly regarded member of the team and skilled at tempting copper piece’s out of the pockets of the audience.</p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t the life that she’d dreamed of as a young girl in the frozen palace, but it was the life she had chosen.</p><p> </p><p>----</p><p> </p><p>A few miles away, another resident of Bang Sing Se was sat in the same sun’s burning rays. Lu Keran lounged on the richly embroidered chaise-lounge, shielding her blemish-free skin with an equally expensive looking ornate fan. Unlike the scenes of the Lower and Middle rings, her view out of the bedroom window provided no interesting observations of human life. Stretched out like a sea of green in front of her lay fantastically manicured rose gardens, spotted with fountains and random statues of past Lu ancestors, observing the land they’d once lived on proudly. Even if she’d been able to crane her neck and squint into the distance, past the gate of the Lu family mansion, she’d be still able to see very little of note. From Keran’s point of view, the gated community the house was surrounded by embodied the essence of the Upper-Ring; reserved, peaceful and all-around dull.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Swinging her long legs around to stand up from the chaise-lounge, Keran reached her arms up, stretching to brush her fingers against the beamed ceilings of her bed-chamber. The prospect of another mundane day loomed in front of her, unrelenting. She truly wasn’t sure how many more hours of flower arranging with the young noble girls of the Upper Ring she could take. Last time, she recalled, she’d had to watch two girls go at each other over confusion regarding peony stems.</p><p> </p><p><em>‘How long has it been’? </em>she muttered out-loud. <em>Surely one more trip couldn’t hurt, she’d be so quick, no-one would know she’d even be missing. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p>Her heart seemed to have made the decision up for her already. Keran skipped to the gilded wardrobe in the corner of the room, digging around in the bottom drawers to pull out a pair of shabby-looking men’s slacks and white collared shirt. Pulling on these raggedy garments and scooping her already short back hair into a worker’s cap, Keran looked at herself in the mirror.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Perfect … As long as no one looked too carefully at her face, which was unmistakably delicate and feminine,  the residents of the Lower Ring as well as the guards at the different checkpoints within the city wouldn’t ever guess that she was Lu Keran,, daughter of Great Marshall Lu , and not ‘ Lee’, a humble Lower Ring street-boy like so many others.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By mid-day the alleyways and dingy streets which made up the Lower Ring were heaving with life. The air hummed with chatter and regular yells of advertisement from market vendors, desperate to shift their wares onto the crowds around them.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Keran wormed and darted her way through the masses of bodies, getting closer to the centre of the slum city. <em>There was something so freeing about escaping to this place … the mask of a local boy not only gave her anonymity but also a break from the confinements of her sex and the stuffy attitudes of the upper class. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p>Stepping back into the throng after grabbing a hot steamed bread bun from a nearby seller in exchange for a copper piece, Keran found herself in the middle of a large cluster of excited folk, waiting in anticipation. Craning her neck so she was able to see over the heads of those around her, Keran watched as a group of four individuals excepted a small striped tent and stepped onto the rickety wooden platform placed directly in front of the crowd.</p><p> </p><p>Slowly bowing to the now cheering audience, the four performers began to showcase their talents. A skinny man with a long mop of jet-black hair with a figure of eight tattooed onto his bare, musuclar chest stepped forward first. Raising his palms to the sky, the man hesitated for only a moment before launching himself backwards into one of the most impressive back-flips Keran had ever seen. Springing back into a front handstand, the man then began to walk on his hands around the circumference of the wooden stage. From the pockets of his trousers, he began pulling out stems of roses which he then handed flirtatiously to the blushing girls in the front row with a wink and a smile.</p><p> </p><p>After the following whoops and cheers had died finally down the man stepped aside, ushering the two girls behind him forwards. Clad in matching rose pink and gold chiffon robes with pieces of gold threaded through their heads of long silky hair, Keran thought these two women looked like princesses from the old folk tales her mother had read to her as a child. They certainly stood out amongst the drab surroundings and muted green and brown tones of the crowd’s clothing.  </p><p> </p><p>Both of the girls curtsied to the fascinated watchers. The taller girl stepped back, pulling out a large bamboo flute. Her shorter counterpart meanwhile took centre-stage, flipping her glossy auburn hair over her shoulder and raising the balls of her feet upwards so she was standing en-pointe.</p><p> </p><p>To the winding, hypotonic notes of her partner’s flute, the girl began to dance faster and faster around the stage. Keran had truly never seen anything like this … the wild energy of the twirling and leaping mixed with the almost melancholy flute song blew anything she’d seen in the grand ballrooms of the Upper Ring out of the water.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The performance finished to explosive clapping and yells from the now sizeable crowd of spectators as the dancing girl pulled out a small bag of snowflake confetti, scattering it in one graceful movement over herself and the wooden boards as a spectacular finale. After a last bow together, the two women also stepped aside … beckoning to the last performer to preform.</p><p> </p><p>The crowd by now was as the peak of its excitement, hushed whispers on what was about to come rushing past Keran’s ears like a wave.</p><p> </p><p>From the back of the stage a short-haired girl strutted forwards, seeming to thrive off the frenzied energy. <em>Wow … </em>was the only thing Keran could think. <em>Just wow … </em></p><p> </p><p>The girl was truly one of the most beautiful people she’d ever seen. Her high cheekbones and sharp jaw was framed by ear-length ashy blonde hair which was slicked back off her forehead. She was dressed simply in a light blue kuzhe with a dark brown belt but the many silver gems which crowded her ears glittered in the sunlight when she tilted her head to bow lowly and deeply.</p><p> </p><p>Pulling out a small glass carafe filled to the brim with water and placing it on the ground in front of her, the girl on the stage reached both hands to the sky. The water rose into the palm of her hands, hovering slightly above her fingertips.</p><p> </p><p>With a burst of energy the girl leaped backwards agilely, pulling the water like whip over her head to the crowd’s amazement … the majority of them never have seen a water-bender before in their lives.</p><p> </p><p>With every contortion of her hands and twisting of her fingertips, the bubble of water took the shape of whatever the girl wanted; a large carp fish, an arrow-pierced heart and an long-sword appeared in the air one by one.  </p><p> </p><p><em>‘FOR MY NEXT TRICK … I NEED A VOLUNTEER!’ </em>the girl shouted out suddenly. Hands rushed up everywhere around Keran, reaching towards the sky in the hopes of being chosen.</p><p> </p><p><em>Oh what the hell … </em>she figured, putting her hand up to join her neighbours. <em>What could hurt, she probably wouldn’t be picked anyway … </em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>‘<em>YOU ! You there … tall boy with the hat! Come up here!’ </em></p><p>Pairs of eyes all around her swivelled to focus on Keran. The crowd parted, giving her a path directly to the wooden stage. Now with a completely uninhibited view, Keran looked up at the girl on the stage. Her hand, covered in ornate and heavy-looking silver rings, was reached out towards her invitingly and her delicate pink lips were shaped into a warm smile.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TWT - @kex9n</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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